I'm a staff writer at Forbes, where until recently I chased the super-rich for our Forbes 400 and World's Billionaires lists. Now I'm covering the consumer economy, writing about the big personalities reinventing retail. Before Forbes, I worked as a news reporter in the UK and my home country of Bermuda, a travel writer for Frommer's and an intern for CNN's Anderson Cooper while completing a master's degree at Columbia University. Got a story idea? Email me at coconnor@forbes.com.

Like Hobby Lobby, organic food company Eden Foods sued the U.S. Government over Obamacare’s employee birth control mandate, but got off comparatively lightly.

The Michigan-based natural products outfit avoided the same months-long media glare, rallies and protests that plagued Hobby Lobby after SCOTUS ruled the DIY company could cite religious reasons for not covering all forms of birth control on worker insurance plans.

Eden Foods did not, however, escape without a boycott effort by some of the country’s best-known regional grocery co-ops.

Madison, Wisconsin’s two-store Willy Street co-op this week announced it’d be removing nine of Eden Foods’ popular products from its shelves after a comment period. 57 per cent of shoppers — all of whom own a stake in the grocery business — wanted all Eden Foods items dropped from Willy Street.

The co-op’s director Kirstin Moore wrote a letter to Eden Foods founder and sole owner Michael Potter, a devout Catholic and the arbiter of the company’s corporate values.

“Please stop allowing personal values to get in the way of the common ground you share with your diverse array of customers and help us return our focus to the high quality of your food,” she wrote.

Moore added that Eden Foods, which itself started life as a co-op in 1969, “ought to understand how some of our consumers may draw the conclusion that today’s Eden Foods — the Eden Foods that filed suit to retain control over how certain employees may use the healthcare compensation Eden Foods provides — has fallen short of our cooperative values.”

“While we appreciate Eden Foods commitment to other political causes such as the non-GMO movement, we are saddened by their decision to fight against providing basic reproductive health services to their own employees, and cannot in good conscience continue to carry their products so long as they continue to oppose this fundamental right.”

“We…always encourage our owners and customers to vote with their dollars by supporting companies that they respect. This is what we suggested our community do when outcry arose over your action last year; and recent renewed interest in your case was cause for us to review sales of Eden products and explore what options we might have that equally (or better) reflect our product guidelines. During this review we found that our community has indeed been voting with their dollars and that 80 percent of the Eden products on our shelves have failed to keep up with the sales of competing products. It is clear that your company has lost support from our community and that people are showing preference to other product lines.”

Other regional grocery co-ops which have dropped some or all of Eden Foods’ product line include Glut Food in Mount Rainier, Maryland and North Carolina’s Weaver Street Market in the town of Carrboro.

The issue remains up for discussion at Brooklyn’s famous Park Slope Food Co-op. At their most recent meeting this week, shareholders decided to send a letter of protest and concern to Eden Foods before making a decision. At Montana’s Bozeman Food Co-op, owner-member votes on the subject are still being tallied.

Eden Foods has been proactive in its attempts to ensure its organic and natural products stay on shelves at as many independent grocers as possible.

In the mailing, Eden Foods explained its healthcare stance without mentioning contraceptives or birth control specifically. The letter urged grocers to consider the company’s healthy, organic, GMO-free wares above all else.

UPDATE: An official statement from Park Slope Food Co-op on the activity at their last meeting states:

The Eden Foods situation was only discussed at the General Meeting on Tuesday night. It was not a proposal for any action; therefore there was no vote or decision made.

If the presenters who introduced the item at the 8/26 meeting decide to go forward with writing a proposal, they will need to submit their proposal to the Agenda Committee to be scheduled at a future GM. Thus, next steps rest in the hands of the members who presented the item on Tuesday night. So the Coop continues to have no official position on the Eden Foods lawsuit pending in the federal courts.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

Thankfully, I have never shopped in Hobby Lobby or bought anything made by Eden Foods even before this controversy started. Glad they never saw one cent from me. If they wish to practice their religious beliefs, they are more suited to run a church than a business. Misinformed religious opinions have no place in the business world.

Bicycle Girl – and that is exactly how things are supposed to work! If you don’t like some company’s policies don’t shop there or buy their products. You don’t try to impose your values on them. Walk away, if enough people agree with you they will either change or go out of business!

Thank you very much for imposing your views on the rest of us. Your post indicates you wish to impose your worldview on everyone which is what you seem to dislike about these business people, although the truth is no one is unable to obtain the birth control they want. This is all smoke and mirrors.

the right to an OPINION is not the same as the right to circumvent the LAW based on a RELIGIOUS view. If it were, ANY company could simply cry foul every time they don’t like the impact of a public policy over a political disagreement. The law of the land means for EVERYONE! NOT everyone BUT those that disagree. Sorry….but YES, we have the right to NOT spend our money there!

Here we go. Here comes the parade of religious bigots who display their “tolerance” by bashing Catholicism and attacking the free exercise of religious beliefs by a family-owned company. If you don’t like it, don’t shop there. But the idea that the government can dictate that a family-owned business – not a large corporation – but a family-owned business, must comply with regulations that are against their religious beliefs simply becuse they are a business is a violation of the First Amendment. Where’s the same backlash against an Amish furniture store or a Kosher or Halal market? Is Bicycle Girl or Mitch going to suggest that a Kosher market should be forced to carry bacon or other products that would violate their religious beliefs? Of course not. So the real question is whether people who make statements like “misinformed religious opinions have no place in the business world” are anti-Catholic or simply feel that religious beliefs other than their own are not entitled to First Amendment protection.

Bicycle Girl, are you uneducated or just watch one news station (MSNBC); The war on women is a rouse created by Democrats to get women to hate Republicans and it only works on either ignorant, uneducated, uninformed or “just don’t care” women. There is no war on women. I walk down the same street as men do; I don’t have to wear a Burka; I am allowed to go to school without being killed for it; I’m allowed to have the same driver’s license as men; I can apply for a mortgage and get a loan; I can pray or not if I want. I can wear a bikini. I have a job and I pay for my own sex habits. So to educate you all once again, Hobby Lobby pays for 16 forms of birth control which means they also provide their staffers with “medical coverage” paid for by Hobby Lobby (nice huh) so ATTENTION: they pay for 16 out of 20. They will not pay for “abortion” inducing pills. that’s all. You still have the right to go kill your baby in an abortion clinic. Are you getting any of this?

Nice try, Mitch, but the law specifically protects such religious views. If there was any attempt by anyone to circumvent the law, it was on the part of the government with this mandate. SCOTUS ruled, essentially, that the mandate was in direct contradiction to both the Constitution and previous legislation protecting such exemptions. If you don’t like it, work to change the law, but don’t claim they were trying to circumvent the law. It makes you sound silly. One other point…I don’t think anyone here is disagreeing that you have a right to NOT spend your money at these organizations if that is what makes you feel better.